[340] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
environmental justice and 11.368
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (asarahm)
Mon Apr 30 13:02:00 2001
Message-Id: <200104301700.NAA15270@cephiro.mit.edu>
To: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 13:00:40 EDT
From: asarahm <asarahm@MIT.EDU>
hi all,
aimee mentioned this class, which she said was on environmental
racism, but the term used in the class is environmental justice. the
class is 11.368, it's taught by Dara O'Rourke, who is an MIT alum. i
took it last spring and highly recommend it, especially for those who
are skeptical about the concept. i'm not implying that you should (or
can) be convinced that the concept is real, but that having more
skeptics in the class would be a good thing. (this is the whole
diversity of thought concept i was talking about in the last email :)).
i got two messages out of the class : one is that much of the
disportionate treatment that minorities are given (i'll use the term
"racism" for that from now on) is not always conscious; and the second
is that this racism is a cycle - it has negative feedback loops.
the two points rather go together - let's take, for example, the
siting of a toxic waste dump. no one wants a toxic waste dump in
their community. a richer (probably white) community often has better
political ties, and land prices are higher. if a proposal to site the
dump in this community is put forward, the community will lobby the
decision-making body, threaten to pull support from politicians and
causes, etc. so they propose to site the dump in a poorer (probably
minority) community, where the land is cheaper, and the community is
(probably) less politically tied.
does the company (or the town) decide to locate the dump in this
community because it's the best location? because the community
doesn't have the political ties and support to block it? because the
land is cheaper? because the community is black (hispanic/asian/etc)?
the motivations are impossible to decipher. but the result is still
the same.
what may be of interest to some of you is the law that most of these
cases are filed is title XI of the 1964 civil rights act, which
doesn't require proof of intent, but just evidence of disparity. when
i took the class there were some lawsuits pending using title XI as
their basis - one involved the mbta and the re-routing of the L track
of the orange line, which used to run from dudley square to downtown.
i haven't been following the case, so i don't know what the current
state of it is, but it forced the mbta to put it's premier bus-line
(the silver) on that route first.
prof. o'rourke is very accessible, and i'm sure would be willing to
talk about any of these issues if you drop him an email. for my term
paper in the class i tried to investigate how mit's environmental
program addresses these concerns, but i couldn't find enough info on
it. but it's an interesting question.
take care all,
-asm
______________
Sarah McDougal
Environmental Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
asarahm@mit.edu
